Canada had the
advantage over the English colonies in bold pioneers of this
type.
Canada was never doubtful of the English peril or divided in the
desire to destroy it. Nearly always, a soldier or a naval officer
ruled in the Chateau St. Louis, at Quebec, with eyes alert to see
and arms ready to avert military danger. England sometimes sent
to her colonies in America governors who were disreputable and
inefficient, needy hangers-on, too well-known at home to make it
wise there to give them office, but thought good enough for the
colonies. It would not have been easy to find a governor less
fitted to maintain the dignity and culture of high office than
Sir William Phips, Governor of Massachusetts in the time of
Frontenac. Phips, however, though a rough brawler, was reasonably
efficient, but Lord Cornbury, who became Earl of Clarendon, owed
his appointment as Governor of New Jersey and New York in 1701,
only to his necessities and to the desire of his powerful
connections to provide for him. Queen Anne was his cousin. He was
a profligate, feeble in mind but arrogant in spirit, with no
burden of honesty and a great burden of debt, and he made no
change in his scandalous mode of life when he represented his
sovereign at New York.
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